Loosening the Knot
by dharmamonkey
Summary: Booth reflects on his anger in the wake of his mother walking back into his life after twenty-four years. Episode tag "The Party in the Pants."


**Loosening the Knot**

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**By:** dharmamonkey  
**Rated:** T  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own Bones. I am, however, interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply.

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_**"The weak can never ****forgive****. ****Forgiveness**_**_ is the attribute of the strong."_ **—Mahatma Gandhi

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I was angry. Really, really angry.

I could feel it in every fiber of my body. The tension coiled around me like a tightly-cinched knot, from my shoulders and my chest, down my arms into my hands—so much that it took effort to unclench my fists and straighten my fingers out—and I could feel it in my neck, running up the sides of my head so tight that my temples hurt. I felt the tension drawn taut along the backs of my legs, down my hamstrings into my calves, and it made my feet ache worse than they had in years, to the point where it seemed like the arches of my feet were on fire, the way the muscles and tendons and ligaments were pulled tight and screamed at me with each step I took.

I could literally taste it in my mouth—a sourness, the bitter bile rising up in the back of my throat—and it seemed like no amount of black coffee or cold beer could wash that taste away.

But where I felt it, where the anger really took root and bore into me hardest and most deeply, was in the pit of my stomach. Right there in my gut—that's where I really felt it, buried deep in my belly, behind my navel, was a big, hard, black, stony knot of anger that weighed down on me like an anvil.

With every breath I took, every step I took, every place I went, and every person I laid eyes on—even Bones and Christine, two of the people I love the most in this world—I felt that knot inside of me, clouding everything I saw in a red haze.

Bones had said something to me at dinner the night before Mom's wedding, right as I stuffed a forkful of fried calamari into my mouth, about how it wasn't healthy to hold onto my anger. I just sat there and groaned, ready to hear her launch into a big spiel about psychological yadda-yadda, so I reached for my glass of Yuengling and brought it to my lips, swallowed my calamari and took a big sip of beer, holding it in my mouth for a few seconds before swallowing it. I felt a vague ache in my jaw as I clenched my teeth and listened to her. We sat on our high bar chairs in our kitchen, and unlike the night before at the Founding Fathers—when I was able to set aside the feelings that were roiling inside of me after the blowout with my mother by changing the subject and talking about the case—I couldn't set them aside anymore. The case was over, finished, and the only subject looming between us was the one I could no longer avoid.

Bones and I had discussed it outside the diner that afternoon, when she'd told me how the Jesus myth, the particulars of which (turning water into wine, walking on water, raising the dead) defied the basic laws of physics, endured because it stood for the transformative power of forgiveness. And she was right. I knew she was right, but I wasn't ready. Even if I'd wanted to forgive my mom, I couldn't. I just couldn't. I was still too angry. It was as if when Mom walked out that door and turned her back on us—the last time she passed through town for a quick visit when I was still a senior in high school, living with Pops and Nan—she took with her the last sliver of a chance Jared and I had at having anything like a normal childhood. Mom leaving us, and Dad leaving us, and Pops moving us to live with him and Nan in Philadelphia—it made me feel like I couldn't control anything. The only thing I had that was my own, that I could actually control, was my anger. And so I held onto it, that anger, the only thing I could really call my own, for all those years.

When Dad died, I tried to let go of some of that anger, and with Bones' encouragement, to remember that it wasn't all bad—that once in a while, in between the screaming matches between my parents, the beatings and the drunken rants, there were good times with my dad.

But in the end, most of what I was left with, deep down inside, was anger—a big, stinking, sticky, shitty knot of anger tied up inside of me that I didn't know how to unwind. So it sat there, stuffed down inside of me where I didn't have to deal with it or think about it.

I did alright in spite of it. Until Mom came back, I guess.

But even then, for a couple of days, I tried to do what I did when my dad passed, and I tried to focus on the good stuff, all the good times we'd had, and all the positive memories we made. It was when she met me by the big crazy chessboard in the park, when she told me she'd been a mom to somebody else's kids, that she'd stuck around to be part of somebody else's family, years after she'd popped smoke, pulled the plug on us and turned her back on _our _family—that's when I lost it. That's when all that anger bubbled up again.

It all came back—all the anger, and all the helplessness.

Bones told me I needed to forgive her. But I was too angry.

We sat there, quiet and tense, eating our lukewarm dinners when Bones pushed her plate of seitan scallopini aside and slid her glass of white wine in front of her. She didn't say anything for a minute, but just stared at the straw-colored Pinot Grigio swirling around in the glass. I felt that knot in the middle of my chest, hard and painful, as I watched her face and felt the muscles in my neck and shoulder tighten with each second of silence that passed between us. I sighed, leaning my head back and rolling my shoulders, trying to work out that tension as I felt that hard knot rise, settling low in my throat. Unnerved by the silence and desperate to wash away the lump in my throat, I picked up my glass of beer, took another long sip and gulped it down.

Finally, she rolled the stem of her wine glass between her fingers a couple of times, then took a breath and looked up at me, her cool blue eyes shimmering back at me as she began to speak.

"I used to think that in order to be strong, I had to be impenetrable," she said, distractedly stroking the side of her thumb over the smooth, round base of the glass. "That to be open, or vulnerable, or accommodating, meant that I was weak."

I closed my eyes and sighed. _Jesus Christ, _I thought. I opened my eyes and looked up at her as my beer glass hit the table with a soft _clank_. I could feel it, the anger, simmering inside of me, somewhere just beneath a low boil, and I chewed on the inside of my lip as I waited for her to tell me that I was wrong to feel the way I felt about my mom.

"Buddhists say," she began, sighing a little as I rolled my eyes, "that holding on to anger is like grabbing onto a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else." Bones pursed her lips and cocked her head to one side, her blue eyes wide and open as she raised her brows and looked back at me with a faint, almost imperceptible smile. "You are the one who gets burned."

When she first said it, her words went in one ear and out the other. I wasn't ready, I guess, to go there. Or maybe I just didn't really understand what was happening to me, what the anger itself was doing to me. It wasn't until later that night that it finally sank in.

I was standing in the doorway of my daughter's room, listening to her make those adorable little smacking sounds that she always makes with her lips when she's falling asleep. I looked at the little dragonfly nightlight in the middle of the wall opposite her crib, and I felt myself getting annoyed at the way the pale green light glowed against the textured paint on her wall. It reminded me of the Green Lantern nightlight I used to have when I was a kid—I don't know, maybe six or seven years old—and the way it looked at night when the lights were off in the room that me and Jared shared in the little rowhouse we had in Polish Hill in Pittsburgh. I remembered Dad kicking it in one afternoon when he got pissed off at me about something—I don't even remember what—and how it had shattered, smashed into a dozen pieces which I picked out of the carpet after he left the room.

I looked at Christine's little dragonfly nightlight and I could feel the anger vibrating through me. I stood there looking into the darkness of her room and I suddenly imagined that the anger was actually rolling off of me in bitter black waves. I was about to turn away and close the door when I felt Bones' slender hands slide up the sides of my arms to my shoulders. I shuddered and flinched away from her touch.

That's when I knew.

That's when I knew that she'd been right.

I couldn't go on this way. I had to let go. I had to find it in my heart to forgive, just as Jesus Christ Himself forgave those who tormented and crucified Him. I had to do it, to cut through the anger somehow and find a way to forgive her.

Not because she was right. Not because what she did wasn't wrong. Not because she's a good mother or because she meant well or because we all make mistakes.

No.

As I felt my partner's hands slide off my shoulders and slip down to my waist and listened to the sleepy little noises coming from the crib a few feet away, I knew I had to forgive my mom so that I could be a better man for the woman who held me and for the beautiful little girl who depended on me. I knew I couldn't be what they need me to be if I held onto that hard knot of anger and let it rule me. As I felt her arms snake around my waist and her hands clasp over my belly, I knew she believed in me. Even if I didn't feel strong enough, I knew that she knew I was. That's when I knew I could find the strength inside to let go of the anger that weakened me.

It wasn't easy.

I woke up that next morning and wasn't prepared to do anything more than send a bouquet of flowers to the church where Mom was getting married. But seeing Christine tugging at the Phillies Phanatic stuffed animal with its goofy green trumpet nose, I felt something shift inside of me. It was as if that hard little knot of anger and pain somehow loosened a little, just enough that I was able to find it in myself to go to that church and walk my mother down the aisle.

Make no mistake. The anger hasn't completely gone away. It probably never will. I'll always have a little anger, a little bit of hurt tucked away inside in that space where my happy childhood should have been.

But the knot has loosened. It's not as hard as it used to be. It doesn't sit as deep in the pit of my stomach as it used to. It's not in the way the way it used to be. I manage. I get by. And every day, month after month, year after year, I let go, little by little. Every day, I let go of a little bit more of that anger. And every day I do, I get stronger, and the stronger I get, the more of that anger I'm able to let go of.

It'll probably always be there—the anger.

But every day, it gets a little less hard.

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**A/N:** _A single 43-minute episode doesn't allow for the kind of evolution that these types of emotional struggles undergo in our real human lives. I wanted to throw something out there to show that forgiveness itself is a process, not a destination. _

_I hope you found that worthwhile. If you did, take a moment to let me know what you think, and how this piece made you feel. _

_In any case, thanks for reading._


End file.
